


Particles

by vivial



Category: Original Work
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Fake Science, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Outer Space, Science Fiction, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 16:52:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20799839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivial/pseuds/vivial
Summary: As Thea wakes up from a simulation used to save someone from an incurable disease, her life suddenly becomes tasteless.





	Particles

THEA || PART ONE

_ Thea, _ it means goddess or divine. It is an adaptation of Theia, the Titan of foreseeing and the bright light of the light blue sky. _ Thea. _My name is Thea.

An intense white light shone upon me, for the briefest moment, I opened my eyes and I thought I was blind. The water’s touch was still very real, but there was no water where I was. I had no idea where I was.

_ Oh God, _I thought repeatedly. Memories came, brutal as usual, and at once. Familiar faces came up as well: my parents, my sister, friends from school, the owner of the communicators shop, the scientists… The memories were coming. All of them.

I tried to move my arms, but I couldn’t do it. It was impossible to move anything; even the lungs seemed frozen too. My eyes turned around, one way then the other, in sheer panic; I tried to breathe, but then again, I also couldn’t do it. I felt like a statue, thrown inside the sea, cold water touching my skin. But there was no water. _ Oh God, _ there was no water.

Sounds echoed in my ears, muffled, as if I was delved in something, but not too much; it was enough so I could hear them. The pitched chirps from the computers, so soft; the metallic voice coming from the artificial intelligence answering someone. Where was I? What was all that? The memories converged and mixed themselves and I couldn’t tell what was real and what was dream. Suddenly, I was atop of a bridge, the sea raging underneath me… But it wasn’t real, it didn’t make sense.

The air felt scarce to me and my consciousness slipped as silk running through a polished wood surface. Sometimes I was, sometimes I wasn’t.

“What is happening?” A female voice said, intense and worried, an echo as if she was a distant ghost.

“It’s Thea, doctor!” Someone said, another woman, but her voice seemed younger and more desperate, definitely more inexperienced. “Her vital signs… they’re disappearing...”

_ Dying, _I was dying. Not a single part of my body responded my commands, except for my eyes and the panic which took over me in a manner of seconds. The air refused to enter my lungs, I felt the need to pant but it just wasn’t possible. Water touched my skin, a water that didn’t even exist.

Light vanished, slowly. Everything went dark, I couldn’t feel anything; slowly my senses got numb. There was only a faint echo, very distant. 

“Her heart stopped!” The inexperienced voice said.

“The defibrillator, right now!” The first woman shouted.

_ Stopped, stopped, stopped… _The echo of that word lasted for long instants, ever more soft and more distant. I couldn’t feel my lungs anymore, not even the pain. There was only the need to breathe, while the memories organised themselves in my mind.

Then, the shock came, in the most brutal way possible.

“Come on, Thea!” The older woman said, closer than before.

Another shockwave, just as brutal. It didn’t hurt, but it felt as if it was shaking the waves of time and space around me. An intense darkness.

Another vibration and then, came the light. Clear, as before. And the pain as well, that came along the air invading my mouth and nose, right back into my lungs. The feeling of water was gone and once again I felt in control. I panted, breathing in despair, every gulf of air as precious as before. I couldn’t get up from wherever I was laying, so I allowed the ambient around me to become more sharp and visible, then I held somebody’s arm. I tried to squeeze it as strongly as I could, but there was no strength left in me. A hand touched my own, gently.

“Thea, calm down.” She was the owner of the older voice. I looked at her. Her figure took a couple of seconds to become less of a glowing blur, then her silver hair took shape, tied in a firm and professional ponytail; her white coat made my memory of her clearer. “It’s okay! Take a deep breath! You’re okay!”

I tried to speak, but not a sound came out of my mouth. My body so sore and stiff, though I could finally move again. The shock from the situation was fading, little by little, although nothing in that world could erase the memories of the other life, the horizon as seen from above that bridge or the grey ocean underneath it, agitated like a raging god.

How could I forget the day I threw myself off a bridge, straight up to death?

***

Nova was a city completely decorated with armored glass, that reflected in a thousand colours under the sunlight, keeping everything glowing. When mixed with the white lights that kept the inside ambients lit up, the whole city seemed to be made of reflections and light.

I leaned my sore head against one of the large windows of the building where I woke up. Dozens of people passed me by, some in white coats, with a golden badge of a rising sun, identifying them as the staff of the Nova Research Center. The NRC was responsible for technological advances and their studies, and worked mostly with biotechnology. They had a varied number of aisles of hospital treatments, from mental diseases to incurable cases. The main goal of the Research Center was to give to the impossible, every possibility.

I was part of a team trained since childhood, to assist in severe mental health treatments. The memories became clearer now and everything made sense. My name was Thea and I was a prodigy of the NRC.

My reflection on the window’s glass showed me a face exhausted from the experience I had just been woken up from. The memory of my suicide in the Nexus world was still fresh and violent and absolutely devastating. Also, it was a first in my spotless record. A volunteer from the mental health medical wing was always emotionally stable and healthy, capable of handling the manipulations the mind deals under extreme circumstances. A volunteer who killed themselves while in the Nexus was basically showing their inability to help the patient. It was normal, of course, and they underwent a psych evaluation, and could return to mild cases if they wished. But that wasn’t something that could happen to me.

“Thea?” The doctor’s voice came from behind me. She was the one who spoke to me when I woke up. “You don’t look well.”

I looked at her, with not a clue of what to say. There was no way, under no circumstance, that I could be well after that situation.

“Of course I’m not well, doctor.” I mumbled, rubbing my face with my trembling hands. “I don’t understand what happened.”

The woman sat beside me. Her name was Meredith Anker and she was the chief medic of the project I belonged to. Despite her strict voice and serious expression, she was young and wasn’t older than thirty. She had gentle eyes despite the harshness of her face and she put her hand on my shoulder, delicately.

“The Nexus is a complex thing, Thea.” She said softly. “Honestly, I’ve seen a lot of people killing themselves during their session on the Nexus, it is not unusual. What concerns me, however, is that you almost actually died. The simulation was not meant to affect you like it did.”

“I’m a prodigy, Dr. Anker.” I sighed, hopelessly staring at her. “Healthy and emotionally stable. All my tests were maxed out, every level of tolerance received max grades. No one better than me should be capable of surviving whatever the Nexus comes up with. And I failed.”

“The Awakening Project is extremely experimental, Thea, and with the comatose syndrome taking on weekly victims, we risked too much in search of a cure or efficient treatment.” said Dr. Anker. “The syndrome is directly connected to a part of the brain that allows us to dream, the same one we connect on the Nexus and somehow, the disease has been affecting the simulation directly. You generated enough dopamine, as did the other two volunteers, and the syndrome forced the Nexus to fight back. It’s why you had to handle violent psychological trauma.”

I rubbed my eyes, still trying to figure out what happened. The Nexus was a simulated world, very similar to my own in many ways, where people connected themselves and went into a trance that allowed them to live a different life in that simulated universe. The memories of the person’s real life vanished, allowing a full immersion in that world. The simulation was constant and since its creation, it followed a continuous timeline that was currently on the 21st century, almost four centuries younger than my world. The way my society used the Nexus was very different; some treated it as a method of entertainment, others studied it in search of knowledge power or enlightenment on philosophical matters, the answers for the reason life and the universe existed. You’d think a super powerful AI would have done this by now, but the only thing the Nexus taught us is that life has no purpose other than the one we give ourselves.

The NRC used the simulation to treat and cure a huge amount of diseases, that sometimes were even seen as incurable.

“Did you at least find something?” I asked, nearly as angry as I was frustrated and sore.

“The relationship between the Nexus server and the comatose syndrome is very intense and intrinsic.” The woman explained. “Because you were connected through the patient and not directly at the simulation, the computer seems to have understood that your dopamine and oxytocin levels were extremely high, so the Nexus fought back to reduce this anomaly.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, right?” I snorted, confused. “I was clearly depressed in the Nexus. Why are my hormonal levels so high when I had depression?”

“I really don’t know, Thea.” The doctor’s voice was filled with doubts and inner questions, I could feel it; it might have been as hard for her not to know what was happening as it was for me. Maybe not as hard, but certainly hard enough. “As soon as we stabilised you, I asked for every type of physical exam they could do it. Nothing showed up, apparently your as healthy as you were when we plugged you in. Your heart attack is, as far as I know, inexplicable.”

I delved into an uncomfortable silence for a couple second, my mind stuck on a constant thinking. I rubbed my face again, then watched the doctor rise and look at me with visible concern.

“Thea, I want you to understand that the circumstances were extreme, the Nexus fought back with everything it had against you. The other volunteers didn’t affect the patient nowhere near as you have.” Meredith said, in a gentle tone; her severe face didn’t match her mannerisms. “The disease used the Nexus to destroy the variable of the anomaly in the system.”

“You speak of it as if the Nexus is _ alive _.”

“In a way, it really is.” She crossed her arms, distressed. “The Nexus is an artificial intelligence created by humans and as every other human creation, it embodies parts of the personalities of its creators. However, unlike a traditional computer, the Nexus is activated through the human mind. With enough personalities gathered, it can adapt and filter; we think it is becoming progressively independent.”

“What a scary thought.” I sighed, pondering the hypothesis of such an intelligence becoming fully independent and the results on my mind were… terrible, at the very least.

“You must stop blaming yourself or searching for an answer to what happened, Thea.” I was already expecting that speech, her voice serious once again. “Go distract yourself, rest. Recover your strength. As you said it yourself, you are a prodigy, your talents are irreplaceable.”

The woman turned her back on me and started to walk away. Still troubled, I called her. She turned around to face me, a gaze of pity on her face, as if she was able to understand what I was feeling at that very moment. She wasn’t, but her attempt at empathy was remarkable.

“When can I come back, doctor?” I asked, feeling anxious. My life was summed up in visiting the Nexus, which would often lead to a constant issue in my society: the addiction.

The Nexus wasn’t always cruel and when it wasn’t used for treatments, many people visited the simulation in its purest version, so they could live lives that were better and happier. And they constantly returned to the Nexus, living dozens of joyful, improved lives, that weren’t theirs at all. No drug could compete with the Nexus capabilities, the joy it could harness, and the withdrawal effects it carried when someone woke up in the real world.

The doctor offered me a sad smile, followed by a reply that, deep down, I already knew.

“It would be for the better if you could stay away from the Nexus for a while, Thea. Only for a month or two. I have no idea about what happened to you, I must understand that first, so I can allow you to return, then.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

When she left me to stare at the endless colourful city, through an unbreakable crystal window, I realised that I couldn’t understand anything, anymore.

LIRA || PART TWO

The lives the Nexus simulate are normal. There is nothing extraordinary there, it’s a world younger than my own, but it simulates many things I know and some I have never heard of, lost to written history at any given point in time. The same person that resides in there for entertainment shares a world with someone like me, for instance, someone that belongs to the medical program. It’s exactly like living your life, except it’s a game; even on the medical field, it is a game and in that game, one that it’s worth lives.

For every month in my reality, the Nexus equals twenty years and every time someone starts their new life in there, they can’t remember anything about their actual life. Everything must be learned again: eating, drinking, walking, speaking. The physical, psychological characteristics, the talents and the flaws, nothing resembles them as they are; it’s a different life, a different person altogether. However, when a person dies in the Nexus and awakes in oreality again, the memories from the simulated life stay and it is a unique experience, even when some people repeated thousands of times.

I sat on my bed, still wet from the recently taken shower. Despite the cold breeze, I didn’t feel bothered; nothing would ever be like the cold I felt when I woke up. The memories were still so vivid and so intense and the bonds left behind were still warm and painful; no matter how unreal the experiences were, deep down, acknowledging those bonds were gone for good and accepting it was difficult, for they were intense and important.

“Lira, my name was Lira.” I whispered to myself, gazing at my own figure reflected in the mirror. The memories fitted slowly now, but they made more sense than before.

Lira had a rough life. She was depressed and a complex human being, constantly dissociating, I was always one step away from killing myself as her. But for some weird reason, I found ways to have hope, although that didn’t last for long. She was nothing like me: a bit smaller, she had straight and dark hair, grey eyes. She was very thin, mostly because she had bad eating habits and she was anything but graceful. Her hands - I mean, _ my hands _ \- were clumsy, and she frequently failed at everything she did.

The Nexus react, always; for every attempt of Lira’s, the comatosa syndrome tripled the intensity Nexus was supposed to respond to and destroyed her will. I would recover, of course, but failure after failure would knock down anyone. In my case, I knocked myself down.

As I said, I was a prodigy, so my mind has always been healthy and stable and to me, people with mental issues were always a mystery that I viewed with fear and empathy. When I started helping patients with psychological problems, I learned to see their inner conflict and that motivated me to help them however I could. Their relief after the treatment was something that filled me with a feeling of irreplaceable accomplishment.

Even as a prodigy though, that time the Nexus truly broke me. It was brutal, consuming every part of me inside out. Usually, when the treatments had the expected result, the doctors forced the Nexus to kill the volunteers, bring them back to real life. A good amount of these deaths were accidents, like car crashes, sometimes they were murders, depending on the need for shock in case the patient required adrenaline to wake up. A suicide, however, was often a way for the Nexus to tell the doctors you failed to solve the problem. Sometimes, in extreme cases, a volunteer killing themselves might mean they aren’t feeling well on a subconscious level. A prodigy shouldn’t fail, at any rate, but I did, somehow.

A thousand things ran over my mind as I dressed myself, wondering about every aspect of Lira’s life and how could I have induced myself to commit suicide. The doctor could have forced the Nexus to kill me for any medical reasons, but she was far too disturbed about it. My actual near death experience was the question; the Nexus was virtually safe, with a few exceptions of internal issues that happen every once in a century or two and even then, the safety measures manage to save almost everyone in there.

“Something eludes me.” I said to my reflection, hair dripping water on my shirt, that uncomfortable feeling of wet fabric against skin.

Something truly eluded me, and no matter how many times I relived the feeling of throwing myself off that bridge, I couldn’t find an adequate answer.

***

The sea where Lira died was grey, dark and violent. As cold as the poles in her world, _ my _ world. She had no one to care about, no family that mattered or friend or anyone at all, and therefore she had no one who could care about her. I used to think I was lonely in my futuristic reality, of crystal glass and neon lights, but Lira… She wasn’t just alone, she was also immersed in a loneliness that prevented her from finding herself. My inner monologues to myself were something she couldn’t even fathom.

I needed to walk around to clear my mind, especially now that I was away from the NRC, without being able to do the only thing I knew. There were gaps in my mind about my life as Lira that made no sense at all; some details were missing with no explanation.

The absurdly clean streets of Nova were an offensive contrast against the ones in the world I left behind, an old world and filled with violence and brutality. Holographics screens would exhibit commercials and news, that were always the same thing; my society had reached pacifism and the most alarming news were when someone was getting divorced or a power shortage here and there. It wasn’t perfect, but it was getting there.

I arrived before a building made of reflective solar panels, a very tall building, that simply looking at its top from the ground floor made me feel dizzy. There was one of the major places for Nexus’s entertainment and one of the main basis for the AI server.

The company who owned that building was called Flamel and they dedicated themselves to provide access to the Nexus for everyone who wished to venture the simulation safely. They were extremely strict with the semestral amount of times a person could access the Nexus, once the addiction was something terrible, but Flamel’s competition weren’t always looking to prevent these issues. As I said before, my society was very close to being a utopia, but its flaws, however scarce, were very damaging.

Something about the metallic decoration and the purple and golden lights made me dive into a stupor of memories about Lira. Her unhappy life had no purpose, nothing more than hope someday things would become easier, but they never did. The Nexus wouldn’t allow that, not when the syndrome influenced its behaviour so it would be brutal and merciless while annihilating anyone who was there, independently of the visitor’s nature, an explorer or a volunteer.

The emptiness Lira felt, I was feeling now as well. Unlike her, I had a purpose, I had people in my life that mattered, despite everything, and I used to have a focus. Now, NRC was keeping me away from the only thing I did well in life.

I felt as if I was still Lira.

GAEA || PART THREE

“You seem unwell.” Gaea’s voice echoed through my ears, but they seemed distant. I had to shook my head to recover my senses, my face felt numb.

“I’m tired, that’s all.” I said, and it was the truth, although only part of it. Even so, Gaea didn’t seem to believe in me and her gaze was conflicted. “All this situation is far beyond what I am used to.”

As the founder of Flamel, Gaea always had in mind the recovery of the Nexus addicts. She was one of them herself and through a lot of effort, she managed to heal and then used her wealth to help others with the same problem. Speaking about our lives in the Nexus is considered improper, almost a taboo, once that life isn’t real and it’s disposable, in a way. Even if two people fell in love with each other while in the Nexus, they would never see each other again once they were back in reality, because the chances of them actually liking each other were, in many ways and for many reasons, improbable and that was beyond the romantic field. Gaea, however, broke the sigil and told, in front of the whole media, about one of her experiences.

Her addiction to the Nexus was destroyed, partially, due to her last life in the simulation. She explained that, while using the Nexus to have a near perfect life, she slowly realised that something was wrong and, that in certain cases, the person could finally snap and acknowledge they were living in a simulation. So, when she realised that, she went into shock and killed herself, returning reality.

“Maybe Meredith is right, you should rest and stay away from the Nexus, you know quite well what happens to addicts.” Gaea spoke, softly.

“I’m not an addict, Gaea!” I said, offended.

“_ Not yet _, but if you keep on like this you will notice how hard it is to let go of the Nexus and from then on is an endless downhill, Thea.” The woman replied. “You understand the risks, you know a great deal of the people who use the Nexus end up with dissociative disorders, depression, social anxiety, the list is endless… That is why we impose boundaries.”

“I am a--” I started, but Gaea rose a hand in a graceful and quick movement, making me stop mid-sentence.

“-- _ a prodigy _, I know. You use this as a justification for someone behaving almost as if they can’t live without the Nexus.” She gave me a harsh look that ran through my body, nearly judging me about something I already knew to be true. “It’s getting bad, Thea. No matter how high were your grades in those tests, practical application is wildly different. You’re dealing with heavy issues from real people, eventually it takes its toll on all of us.”

“I just want to understand why I almost died for real, Gaea, what is the reason for my suicide in there. That is all.”

Gaea sighed, shaking her head in a clear gesture of quitting that argument.

“Thea, you know what I’ve been through, so listen to me.” She said. “There is not a single thing in the world worse than figuring out you live in a simulation, that your whole life is not real. It’s even worse when you don’t know there is something beyond death, a place to return. When I killed myself in the Nexus, I just wanted the emptiness I felt to vanish; I didn’t remember anything about my reality. All I know is that none of that life was real and something was dreadfully wrong.”

Something she said made me look at her, surprised, almost indignant with how obvious things were. It was if something clicked inside my head, a soft noise of information being unlocked. Lira’s memories fitted some of the gaps, partially.

“Gaea, I… Do you remember how you felt when you woke up here? Your memories, the feelings that lingered from the other life?” I asked, my hands shaking.

“Very little, it has been so many years already… I can recall the shock, but I remember very little from the simulated life… Except that I killed myself because of the simulation, the discovery of it...” Her voice was hesitant, as if she sought the information deep down, but couldn’t find it. As if there were _ gaps _. “Some things before my death are clearer than others.”

“Gaea, this is it!” I said almost cheerfully, rising from my chair, my whole body trembling now. My breathing was rushed, just as my heart was; a cold feeling ran down my spin, bristling my whole body, shock and surprise spreading through me.

“I don’t--”

“You don’t remember anything, just like I do… It makes a lot of sense, Gaea.” I could barely hear her speech, eagerness taking a hold of me.

“I don’t get it, Thea.” Gaea said, as loud as she could without actually shouting. I could feel reality slipping away from grasp. “What are you talking about?”

I held her shoulders, trying not to tremble, but it was difficult. My cold hands were sweaty.

“Gaea, you didn’t kill yourself because you figured it out.” I explained, my voice going faster than I could form the words, my memory becoming clearer by the minute. “The Nexus _ deliberately _ killed you.

***

“Dr. Anker! Dr. Anker!” I shouted through the NRC corridors, running desperately across the same place I had been seated twenty-four hours before.

I shoved people, almost unconsciously on the act, while I carefully assembled my theory in my mind. And even with almost all of my memory restored, there was still something missing, something essential so I could understand what was going on.

“Thea?” The woman stood up, suddenly, just as I entered her office, under an egregious behaviour. My senses felt numb. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“I… I… I don’t know.” I panted, supporting my body with one hand on the wall. “I’ve met with Gaea, you know? And she told me… about her experience on the Nexus.”

The doctor shook her head in disapproval.

“I asked you to rest and you decided to visit the most controversial human being when it comes to the Nexus? Thea!” Meredith spoke, alarmed. “We almost lost you today! Forget about this for a moment, the last thing you need right now is the Nexus!”

“Listen, Meredith!” I shouted, so exasperated that my body seemed very close to collapsing. I clench my fists to avoid shivering and the memories of the anxiety crisis Lira had came to mind once more and I realised I was very close to having one myself. “Gaea explained that, during her stay at the Nexus, she realised her life there was a simulation. Some people there had a guess, but she actually learned the truth, and the Nexus made her kill herself to fix the flaw.”

“Thea, it doesn’t make sense. Even if she had found out, saying that the Nexus himself made the decision of killing her… it does not add up.”

“Why not? Imagine she spreads the news about their virtual lives? Even if it took a long time for them to accept it, she could prove it, she could find a way to… Meredith, I--”

The doctor crossed her arms over her chest, after rubbing her eyes with one of her hands.

“I understand you are frustrated, believe me, so am I.” Her voice had a tenderness that slowly enraged me, word by word. “But what you are doing is lack of good sense. I know it is difficult to accept it, yet as I told you, the Nexus is complex and under the influence of the syndrome, it affected you gravely.”

“I don’t care how it affected me, doctor.” I scoffed, rubbing my temples, trying to recall that tiny detail that was missing, a lost puzzle piece in my head. “I want to remember, I _ must _ remember what happened!”

“Thea, you need to calm down!” The doctor said, urgently, but I could barely hear her, my hands covering my face, my head throbbing from the mental effort of reviewing everything I could remember from my life as Lira. I paced, tirelessly, although I was feeling exhausted.

“A detail, a single memory… It’s all that is missing!” I mumbled in a trance.

“THEA!” Meredith yelled at me, her strict expression softening itself through a worried gaze. I stopped moving and stared at her, shocked. “You need to calm yourself down, or I will have to sedate you, you are not well! Forget this! Go home, rest for a while and find a hobby, because you need to take a leave of absence from the NRC.”

“You don’t understand...”

“I’m sorry, Thea, but in your state, you’re at risk of being labelled an addict, and frankly you’re quite close to that.” Meredith whispered, frowning. I did not know how to react. “If you keep on this path, you could be diagnosed with so many different mental dysfunctions and disorders and you will never be able to volunteer again, if that happens. Go, Thea! Rest, let this go, just this once.”

I stood still for a couple of seconds, surprised with her reaction. Then I came to myself and hurt, I left her office. I had already considered that that day would come, the day I would be so drowned in the Nexus I would need help to get out. The worst part was the denial and it wouldn’t let me live.

Denying the problem was always so much easier.

Instead of going home I climbed to the top of the building. There, it was common to find smokers, but night was already falling over the city and the sky was a blur of silver and golden stars splashed all over it, shining from a distance like a hundred million tiny fireflies; I was alone there.

Watching the city from up there was an irrational thing; tall buildings seemed small and thousands of neon lights were glowing in multiple colours, from purple to yellow to blue and white than golden and so on, litting up Nova and its crystal transparent windows. A cold wind blew through my hair and, still in shock, I climbed atop the guardrail.

The vertigo that came went on just as quickly. I opened my arms, letting the wind draw my silhouette while tears came to my eyes and I felt, again, as if I was Lira and her existential emptiness. I spent the whole day trying to understand why she felt that way, when in the end I was feeling the same way: no purpose or focus or motives to live for. Lira ended up being a reflection of I truly was and nothing was as scary as that.

Standing there and feeling the wind shook my body vertiginously, I felt again as Lira on the bridge, the sea roaring underneath me. The scent of salt and rain came through my nose, but nothing woke me up from stupor, a numb feeling when one gives up on everything. But _ why? _

The memories were flooding my mind now, as tiny diamonds floating in dirty water; I remembered everything. Oh my God, I remembered.

_ Oh my God. _

NEXUS || PART FOUR

“Thea!” Meredith’s voice echoed behind me, but I didn’t bother to turn around; tears were streaming down my face and the wind made them cold. “What are you doing there?”

“I remember, Meredith.” I whispered, touching my head with delicate fingers. It hurt, everything hurt. “I remember everything!”

“Thea, get off there.” She said, softly, in a very low tone; that made me scorn her, interrupting my cry mercilessly.

Never in my life I wish my curiosity and stubbornness were nonexistent, because at the exact moment I memory came to me, I wished I never even dreamt of that possibility. It was haunting, terrible; Gaea was right, but only partially.

“Thea, please, get off there and let us talk.”

“I realised we live in a simulation, just like Lira.” I closed my eyes, tears dropping through the eyelashes. “None of that was real. The despair was terrible, can you imagine? Your whole life is a lie, a game of data made by some AI developed by advanced humans? It’s not normal.”

Meredith stood silent for a couple of seconds before speaking again, perhaps because she feared saying something that would trigger my jump. Nothing she could say would trigger that, of course, not when I already knew so much.

“Thea, I--”

“You have no idea how awful that is, Meredith, how terrible it feels.” My voice was hoarse and shaky, as if I lacked the strength to speak. “There is nothing else to believe in, because everything was a lie.”

“How did you find out about it? The Nexus… He should stop it from happening.”

The wind came stronger this time and I opened my eyes, arms open as if I yearned to fly. The city shone, my wet eyes blurring the light into a glowing stain.

“A flaw… A system failure, so tiny, so intense!” I explained in affliction. “A mistake in the data banks that damages small portions of the simulation, it is visible, audible...”

“A system failure that absurd? In our system?” Meredith sounded confused and I couldn’t blame her. She was also closer to me as well, as least she sounded closer, but what did I know about anything?

“No, Meredith, it was a failure on _ their _ system.” I whispered, fearing the simple action of voicing that. “ _ We _are in a simulation.”

Meredith let out a sigh of doubt and I explained to her, half in shock and half in despair, what actually happened on the Nexus. An anomaly had appeared to me while I was using a computer as Lira and I saw myself, laying down at NRC central, in stasis. And the fact I nearly died had to do with the fact not only I had figured I was in a simulation as Lira, but I was also in another simulation, as me. None of my allegedly reality was true.

“That is… not possible, Thea!” Meredith said, but she seemed as distressed as I was; and that wasn’t even the worst part. “We… no, we can’t be...”

“Our artificial intelligence is part of something bigger and far more potent.” Every word I said was another step towards jumping, but there was still something missing. I closed my eyes, trying to find calm and reason, to no avail. “Whoever built our Nexus didn’t build anything at all, it’s as if the computer is dissolving into multiple simulations. Imagine the processor’s power of that? To maintain a simulation within a simulation.”

The woman couldn’t speak and we both stood there, in silence, drowned in melancholia that slowly ate us alive because no sane person could live at peace knowing that their life was nothing but an insurmountable amount of data in a computer. No, there was no meaning to life or purpose, no hope to get attached to. There was nothing else left in me to drive further, now all I could see was the silver screen of data, nothing else.

“If we--”

“I don’t know if death would drag us to the source, or if it would simply kill us.” I mumbled, watching the distance between me and the ground and it was very very high. “There are no words that I could say, life as we knew it does not exist, I guess. Who I am, I do not know, and there is no purpose to live for.”

“THEA, DON’T!” Meredith screamed when I threw myself forward, wind vigorously shaking my hair and clothes.

It was already late, I was already falling. The city lights shone to me, intense and colourful long exposure flairs, because I was falling fast. I closed my eyes, wishing I was wrong, so I could die and truly die, and let go of existence. A life with no purpose was no life at all, and if I chose a simulation over my own real existence, it meant the world I came from must be just as terrible.

The impact was brutal, strong but painless. I was dead the moment I fell upon a car. There was no time to say goodbye to the world, a world that didn’t even exist.

“Thea.” A voice said, echoing beside me. I felt the breeze shake my clothes, cold, and I could sense I was standing somewhere. “Open your eyes.”

I did. I was still at the top of the building, standing at the guardrail, the city shining before me. But something was wrong, as it always was. A storm was surrounding the city, dark clouds toppling each, reaching for the floor as if it was tsunami, except it was black and made of smoke and lightning. I staggered, then turned around to see behind. The smoke was swallowing the city from everywhere, cornering me at its center.

“Thea.” The voice said again. In Meredith’s place was a woman with very similar features, but it was clear it wasn’t her. She had black hair and piercing blue eyes that scoured my very soul in search of truth. She held her hand for me, but I didn’t take it. “You are dying.”

“What? No… Who are you?” I shouted because the winds were becoming louder and stronger, so much I nearly fell. Again. “What is happening?”

“You know who I am.” The woman said, and when she spoke it was like her voice came from everywhere: the building, the storm, the city. She was still offering her hand to me, and I cautiously stared at it and at her. “You are dying, Anthea. Your mind is devouring itself, deleting your memories, destroying your sense of self. You must fight it.”

“I don’t--”

“Listen to me, we don’t have much time. Something went wrong.”

“What went wrong?”

“Everything, apparently.” The woman pointed at the storm, which was closer and closer, lightning shining while it swallowed the city, the neon lights shutting down. Everything went dark and I panted, feeling the fear on my bones.

“What is going on?” I said, and the woman kept her hand in my direction, but I wouldn’t take it.

“We don’t have time for this, Anthea, your brain is destroying your memories, if you don’t wake up, your mind will be fried and you will be basically dead.” Her voice was intense and somehow, devoid of emotion, as if she couldn’t process it. Her face was impassive, but her eyes had a glitter that nearly screamed with urgency. “Let me help you, before it’s too late.”

I couldn’t move or speak, anxiety taking ahold of every muscle of my body. What was I supposed to do? What was really happening? The clouds were closing in on us, on me, and I was paralysed out of fear, so the woman reached out to me and pulled me towards her, abruptly. Her hands were warm and I could smell her citric scent, but how was that even possible?

At the same moment the world and its existence disappeared to my senses, light shone brightly before my eyes, as I sat down on a gurney made of metal. Gasping, I sat quickly, trying to assimilate what was happening.

Surrounding me there were holographic displays, lit up and twinkling, showing medical data from heartbeat to blood pressure and body temperature. The gurney where I was in was similar to a pod or a large incubator. The whole room was made of titanium, polished, and the clean glass windows showed a billion of stars glowing in the dark sky.

_ Not a sky _ , I told myself, surprised yet confident I was completely correct, _ I am in space. _

Only then I realised two women dressed in light fabrics that were aiding me. One of them was injecting my arm with something, probably a sedative. The other held my shoulder, gently, and smiled at me. They didn’t look like nurses or doctors, and the woman who smiled at me had an eerie aura around her, as if she wasn’t human.

“You’re alright, you just got out of stasis.” She said, trying to hold me; I looked around, in panic, as I slowly perceived I was alive. Either I dreamt the whole thing or the woman in the simulation did something to me that took me out of it. At any rate, both hypothesis were unnerving. “This is the ship Kios-7. We’re in Andromeda. Do you remember anything? I am Boreal and this is Galix, we’re admirals, do you understand? You are okay, everything is fine now.”

Nothing was fine, not even in a million years things would be fine. The memories flushed inside my head, bitter, confusing and painful. _ Thea, _ I thought. _ My name really is Thea. _

“Do you remember anything? Who are you?” The woman named Galix asked, her hand opening my eyes as she aimed a flashlight to check my pupils. The brightness dazzled me even more.

I was stunned, but I nodded slowly. Little by little I assimilated everything I could remember.

“My name is Thea Gael. I come from Earth. Kios-8. _ The last colony ship. _Thea… Gael...” I mumbled, but my conscientiousness faded.

Boreal lay me down one more time and another presence showed by her side. It was a man, tall and dressed and white, but not like a doctor. My sight was blurry and I could make very little of his face, but he was handsome and austere, a silver beard covering his chin and cheeks. He had grey eyes and there was also an unnatural aura around him, but his signature was much more friendly and I felt safe. Until he spoke.

“Hello, Thea Gael.” He whispered, his grave voice drawn in a gentle tone; I felt my vision darken slowly, but I still could hear him before I fainted. “I _ am _ Nexus.”


End file.
